Our Brief Fling With Payroll
More than a few years ago, when STORM was finding out first hand that we still needed to educate the market about flexible benefits, we were scrambling on ways on how to generate more sales.
I had an idea.
"Let's offer payroll!"
My several justifications were many: to be known as both a compensation AND benefits services company, "payroll wasn't rocket science", and the idea that we could just use the current system we developed internally to run it.
Because there were many competitors, we couldn't put quite a big enough margin per sale. So I figured, we could make up for it with a bit of volume. Our minimum price was around P15-20K per month for a … [Read more...]

I'm not a salesman, but I've sold many things.
At the age of 11, I sold cellphones at my uncle's telecom store in Makati. When I worked for GK CSI, I sold everything from kamoteng kahoy, talong, and chicharon (no relation to Lapid's :) ).
For my first full-time job in the States, I sold consumer banking products. I was exposed to the world of cold calls and sales scripts. My personality wasn't cut out for a "sales" job. Back then, pitching for me was like pulling teeth.
However, a job in sales taught me many things. It taught me how to use assumptive language, and never to make assumptions about a person based on his/her appearance.
I also learned how to pitch the sale to ALL … [Read more...]

A few years ago, I would always pass by Wilson street and then take a right at Jose Abad Santos street to go home. One day, I noticed a new tea place was being constructed along J. Santos.
As a huge milk tea fan, I was highly intrigued. I dropped in for a visit as soon as I saw the "OPEN" sign. I was an early adopter. It was the owner herself who was at the counter. I immediately noticed the concept was a bit different from anything being offered locally. This wasn't Struan and Tang, nor was it another Quickly wannabe (delighted it wasn't).
They were using fresh tea and there was a clear system: tea bag repository (a wide variety), some sort of a "tea espresso machine", a "topping" … [Read more...]